Reverse / invert a dictionary mapping

Question

Given a dictionary like so:

my_map = {\'a\': 1, \'b\': 2}

How can one invert this map to get:

inv_map = {1: \'a\', 2: \'b\'         


        

Answer 1

If the values aren't unique, and you're a little hardcore:

inv_map = dict(
    (v, [k for (k, xx) in filter(lambda (key, value): value == v, my_map.items())]) 
    for v in set(my_map.values())
)

Especially for a large dict, note that this solution is far less efficient than the answer Python reverse / invert a mapping because it loops over items() multiple times.